The week in film

While the newly amped-up Sydney Film Festival was in full swing, Melbourne Film Festival director Richard Moore came north to propose that this year MIFF will have more films straight from Cannes than ever before.

And that's true -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- the films which succeeded in Cannes, as well as a number which were panned, are there in MIFF's program. There is considerable interest in new films from Italy, where a new surge of tough-minded film-making has produced such films as Gomorrah, based on Roberto Saviano's book on the Mafia. It won the Grand Prix from the Cannes jury.

But Sydney did get Steve McQueen's Hunger and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata, also in competition and straight from Cannes. And both festivals will have the much admired film from the Dardenne Brothers, Lorna's Silence.

Is there rivalry between Australian film festivals? Together, festival directors present a smiling, supportive, united front. Behind the scenes, of course, there is rivalry. But with a much bigger vision, and government funds to ramp up a bigger, splashier, more city-wide festival, Sydney under Clare Stewart now looks like giving the well endowed MIFF a run for its money.